Comment by safety1st | Hacker News Reader

Comment by safety1st | Hacker News Reader

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I think for the average person, looking too carefully at individual studies is failing to see the forest for the trees.

Basically any time we do a study which asks "Is doing a bit more exercise better for you?" the answer is yes. Like doing a single walk around the block every week is better than doing none. Even five minutes of exercise is better than zero. But obviously these have much less positive impact than several hours of moderate to intense exercise weekly. There are diminishing returns but they don't really kick in until you're already pretty fit, they are only really a concern that athletes need to think about.

So in terms of individual decision making things are really simple. Are you not fit? Do you feel bad? Are your basic markers for this looking bad (blood pressure, weight etc.)? Do more exercise. Do what you enjoy, do it safely, and do as much of it as you can as intensely as is reasonable, and the numbers will go in the right direction. This will put you way ahead of the average American in terms of fitness, it's not until a higher level that things really start to get technical.

> There are diminishing returns but they don't really kick in until you're already pretty fit, they are only really a concern that athletes need to think about.

Unfortunately, it's people at both ends of the fitness curve that have to be careful about increased exercise frequency/intensity. On the less-fit side, the primary concern is accumulating minor injuries that reduce capacity for exercise even further leading into a downward spiral.

Thats why we recommend obese people to walk first, even if they think they would enjoy running.

Too much exercise is a problem that can happen to literally anyone. Not just due to injuries. Fatigue management is one main component.

Saying that more exercise is always better is a completely false statement. Do not care if it sounds good or is meant to "help" people or whatever, it's completely false and can harm uninformed people.

This guy looked at longevity stats for runners. He recommends running a little, not a lot.

2012 TEDx Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6U728AZnV0

Not only what you say is objectively truth, it's motivating! Just start moving your ass!

Would only change "This will put you way ahead of the average American in terms of fitness, it's not until a higher level that things really start to get technical." striking out "American", just because it works everywhere.

While it's true that doing any amount more exercise is beneficial to the average person, they may not necessarily know/feel it. As we so often see super fit people in the media, it's easy to think we need to do hours of exercise daily for any benefit. Easy to then think "what's the point? I'll never be super fit" and do nothing. Recinforcing the narrative (including publication of studies) that no, even a small amount of execise is quite beneficial, is encouraging for the average person.

I think is exactly what the comment addresses (at least how I understood it). Just do whatever makes you happy, but move! Is not about being a model, it is about being heathier than moving less.

Shannon Sharpe works out at my gym.

Huge guy. Former NFL tight-end. Still very fit.

I notice he only does 1 hour at the gym and then he leaves.

Granted, this is very low quality anecdata.

But seeing how brief his workout is opened my eyes to the benefit of consistency over volume.

Dorian Yates (former mister Olympia) claimed he trained 4 times a week for 45 minutes while preparing for the contest. But very intense training.

He also sells training so there is reason to doubt anything he says about the topic.

Eh... I disagree. I've not bought his training but I have been actively fit since I was in highschool and have bought training before. There is value is getting regimens and techniques from really experienced athletes.

Edit: Also, I've been on a 4 day Bukgarian split before and had very good results. If you want proof there is a 30 minute routine that can kick your ass I recommend looking up Ryan Humiston's take on it.

Um, not really any reason to doubt as there's nothing wrong with selling what you find works

Moreover, my experience in having formerly trained to compete at top international levels, studied exercise physiology and worked as a trainer, is very similar.

The really short oversimplified version is: more intensity, shorter training, and more rest — it is the balance of exercise and rest that is key. And world-class results are definitely possible with relatively brief workouts; in fact, it's the best way to do it.

The simplified concept is the muscles gain strength with stimulated rest. The training/exercise only provides the stimulus for the muscles to grow, the exercise does not actually grow the cells, it degrades or damages them. It is the repair process that strengthens the muscle. Too much exercise and too little rest (=repair+growth) just degrades the system; too much rest without exercise stimulus wastes potential growth time.

Some is good, but more is not necessarily better.

While there is no question that some exercise is almost always better than none, if you want peak results, intensity is the key. By intensity, we mean pushing the muscle to failure, so the end of each lifting set is not a predetermined number of reps, but the rep where you push as hard as possible and simply cannot complete the lift (after ~5-25 reps depending on focus on strength vs bulk, respectively). Do that one to three times for each muscle in the workout, then give it some days rest. A 45-min workout is sufficient to work the upper, mid, or lower body zone. Doing only one zone each day fits a max of six workouts per week, and monitoring vital signs (pulse/bp/temp) for overall stress will usually reduce that to around four weight workouts per week. This is what worked for me and the people I trained, and I'm not the least bit surprised to find it also worked for Dorian Yates (and no, I'm not selling anything related to exercise programs).

When you're on steroids your body is basically a muscle making factory. You mainly need to consume enough protein and calories and your body will essentially do the work for you.

A person who takes steroids and doesn't work out will still gain more muscle than a non-steroid user working out for an hour every day.

I wish someone had told me this: once you put muscle on your frame it tends to stick around.

If you bulk up and turn into Hercules over the course of a few years you can scale back your training volume dramatically and as long as you keep your diet right, you will continue to be a jacked and cut dude for many many years.

I'm sure this gets less true as you age but it seems to apply to me in my 40s.

Maintenance is just way easier than the initial buildup.

I discovered this pretty much on accident when I scaled back the volume and intensity of my own training and noticed... Huh would you look at that... Very little changed.

Like on some level, it would be harder to return to the state of roly poly schlub that I was once in, than to continue being the fairly fit person I am now. I just autopilot twice a week to the gym after work, zone out and listen to podcasts for an hour while doing some pretty moderate intensity lifts, and the body stays in pretty decent shape. I barely break a sweat now compared to the first year or two.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Shannon Sharpe was doing a lot more than one hour per day of training when he was playing competitively. It's my observation that two workouts or practices per day is typical for collegiate athletics, even in the sports and at the schools that don't bring in money.

But after that? Yeah, no doubt that one can maintain most of that fitness with a small fraction of the time and effort.

As I said up-thread, I started running as an Army cadet, and I've continued to take annual fitness tests throughout my career. The fastest guys on those tests are guys who (unsurprisingly) were serious runners or soccer players in high school / college but who (surprisingly) did very little running after that. They could jump into the test cold and laugh their way to two miles in 12:00 (11:00 if they were really trying). I, on the other hand, basically didn't start running until I joined the Army, and I had to put in a lot of miles to break 13:00. For several years after that, though, I was able to reduce my mileage too and still run circles around a lot of people.

He is also 56 years old and has the muscle definition of a man in his 20s, when biology shows building and retaining that kind of quality muscle at that age is very difficult even with a history of physical fitness. I'll just say it, he's probably on TRT or some other gear..

I do wonder how many people do not take care of the basics and instead go for anti-depressants and Ozempic. I get it if you tried everything, but how many do?

When I stop compulsively eating and drinking, when I look for every opportunity to do something as an exercise, I snap out of my [self-diagnosed] depression and malaise in a few days, and feel great.

The doctors rarely tell you to eat your salads. "Here is a pill, thank you for your business".

? Doctors tell people to diet and exercise all the time.

The problem is that the doctor has very little to offer other than to tell people to do that, and the vast majority of people will nod and continue doing whatever they were doing.

This really downplays the impact of clinical depression. It's often not solved by exercising alone, and if you talk to a psychologist about this, the first thing they do is recommend exercising or at least goeing for walks as an immediate measure before potentially therapy or medication starts.

When I went to a doctor complaining about low energy, literally the first question was about weight gain and exercising, so I'm not sure where your comment about the pills comes from.

My comment comes from the seeming ease of procuring these drugs - with people going on Ozempic out of pure vanity.

you did end your comment with:

> The doctors rarely tell you to eat your salads. "Here is a pill, thank you for your business"

which makes it appear as even with your “self-diagnoses” you’re under the impression that doctors rarely ask about exercise and diet and then move forward from there. which is the exact opposite of what i’ve seen from a college roommate, a close friend, and an ex who saw multiple different doctors, and each of those doctors first insisted on:

a) find a hobby, dive into it. and,

b) exercise multiple times per week. and,

c) get a nutritionist. and

d) only after those things showed little results would they prescribe SSRIs or other long term drugs.

i promise this isn’t coming down on you, i promise, but, we seem to have a massive trend of confidently wrong people implying they’re smarter than actual doctors or (just about any other subject it seems), they just guess what doctors do and don’t do. and even far more concerning is how often these confidently wrong people issue blanket advice to randoms online as if they’re at all qualified and as if they know any of the important intricate details of the randoms they’re advising.

we desperately need to get back to a place where people can confidently say “i don’t know” again. we’re (including myself) too desperate to chime in even if we’re woefully ill equipped.

maybe every secondary-university semester everyone should get a refresher session on the most basic ass socrates/plato: the smartest person is the one who knows, understands, and admits about how much they are ignorant.

Most people don't know what depression is. I'd say I've been depressed most of my life but the best periods have been the ones where I was physically active.

Now, there's a bit of a chicken and egg problem here -am I sedentary because I'm depressed or am I depressed because I'm sedentary?

I would agree with the previous poster that exercise brings me out of depression, but I spend most of my depressive periods thinking I should be more active, right now I'm in one and I keep trying to get into some healthy habits but I keep giving up because I just don't have whatever it is that I need to keep it going. I even get nearly immediate results, just a few weeks of activity has me feeling better already. But then I find some reason to take a break and then the break drags on and I'm back to where I started.

So maybe it's the depression keeping me down or maybe it's my lack of discipline causing depression but either way I'd say physical activity is important for how you feel on a daily basis and I genuinely think just getting into a regular rhythm of exercise even just one day a week can have huge impacts on your life.

> The doctors rarely tell you to eat your salads. "Here is a pill, thank you for your business".

I'm guessing you are in the US? There is a lot of medical advice here (UK, and Europe more widely) which is essentially “eat better and move around more”. A great many don't listen to that, but it is definitely said.

> When I stop compulsively eating and drinking [and do some] exercise

This is a key issue: not what doctors are prescribing but what people do to self-medicate. The harmful side of self-care when “a bit of what you like does you good” becomes overconsumption and underactivity. It can be even worse for those of us with significant mental issues over the norm (bit of a bipolar pillock myself, got a piece of paper saying so & everything, and like you describe with depression I find the right exercise, while not at all a panacea, helps regulate my mind quite a lot as well as stopping my body falling apart).

even in the US a lot of doctors say this because it is usually less of a pain in the ass than filling out referral paperwork to specialists that cost more for the patient anyways.

part of the problem in the US is that at least some medical practices/hospitals measure patient satisfaction as a metric to evaluate performance, but what is good for the patient and what makes them happy is not necessarily correlated. it's a factor into how the opioid epidemic got as bad as it did in the US. and also i'd imagine if you kept telling people this for decades and they didn't listen people might just not bother.

> The doctors rarely tell you to eat your salads. "Here is a pill, thank you for your business".

That's because advice like this is useless. Everyone knows they should eat more vegetables, you need someone to guide you through habit formation, which is not what the doctors are for.

I do wonder how many people do not take care of the basics and instead go for anti-depressants and Ozempic.

Bear in mind that for many people therapies like SSRIs and weight loss medications (or even counselling/therapy) can get them into the right mental and physical place to start doing more exercise and eat better.

It's easy to advise people to eat well and exercise, but it can be a bit like telling a miserable person with a migraine to smile more. Improve the underlying issue artifically, then they can have a better chance of starting the natural things. Doctors do need to do both, though, merely handing out medications without encouraging the next step is irresponsible IMO.

I've never suffered from a mental illness, so I'm genuinely curious; is exercise not ever used as a prescription for depression? Physical therapy is a thing, so it can be a prescription in some cases, no?

Oh, it absolutely is, and from what I've read, it can work really well! It's just not necessarily a 'one size fits all' which is what makes medicine complicated and good doctors valuable.

If someone's hit the point where they're thinking "I'd rather be dead than leave the house", improving their mental health by any means necessary should be the first step. But not everyone should be given pills as the first option and many doctors are guilty of such laziness (over prescription of opioids and antibiotics are other examples of this – some patients urgently need them, most don't).

Compliance matters. Once a day pill is much easier to do than rework routine especially when patient has the "can't anymore" disease. Read Darkness Visible if you want to hear all about what that looks like.

I think it'd be a great idea to perscribe physical therapy for people who need to exercise. Especially for the highly inactive who may not know how to start, and haven't made it a routine. That would send patients to a therapist who would help make sure they aren't doing more than they should and that they're working out correctly, and also provide the doctor with feedback/monitoring of their progress.

The problem is that in the US no doctor is going to do that because no insurance company will pay for it. In the US even people who have serious injuries and need physical therapy to recover properly from them often can't get their insurance to pay for physical therapy or to pay for enough of it (for example insurance might only cover 3 sessions when they need 12)

Insurance companies would rather have doctors print out a a few sheets of paper that kind of explain several exercises (maybe with a couple black and white pictures if you're lucky) and then expect the patients to figure it all out on their own at home, in the exact same environment they have been in, surrounded by distractions, and with no one to help them which leads to poor compliance and zero data to give back to the doctor.

Insurance companies are criminally stupid in this sense. They'd rather not pay for things that would make people healthier like physical therapy, preventative medicine, medical tests, or even gym memberships, even when by not doing those things it will clearly end up costing them more down the road.

Every doctor I’ve ever been to starts out recommending lifestyle changes. I think it’s the patients that ask for the medication.

> There are diminishing returns but they don't really kick in until you're already pretty fit, they are only really a concern that athletes need to think about.

The paper suggest otherwise. Replacing ten minutes of your otherwise 11 hours of sedentary time with exercise will have less than twice the effect on blood pressure of replacing five minutes with exercise. That is diminishing returns.

Yeah people just need to focus on doing the basics right [0].

[0] https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog/where-should-my-priorit...

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